


Finding Perfect

by Canaan



Series: Major Arcana [18]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Alternate Universe, Multi, Plot What Plot, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-17
Updated: 2011-10-17
Packaged: 2017-10-24 17:32:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/266059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canaan/pseuds/Canaan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack gets tickled.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finding Perfect

**Author's Note:**

> Falls sometime after "This, Too, Is Love," but well before "Strength." Can be read stand-alone, just assume a past history of consensual kink in a loving, established relationship. Written for Yamx, because she asked nicely. BR also by Yamx.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own them, and I'm sure the BBC is relieved.

"Jack!!" Rose elbowed him.

Jack gave himself a little shake and looked away from her--not like that really helped. They were still soaked in the green fluid that the Doctor said stimulated latent telepathic ability, and Rose could still feel him thinking about the way her wet shirt clung to her frankly magnificent breasts, and he couldn't help imagining exactly how her nipples would show if she weren't wearing a bra underneath . . . She blushed fiercely.

"Sorry," he said, and she knew he really was, because he could feel how uncomfortable his very vivid appreciation made her. "Psychic shielding was never my best thing--I've had just enough training to know how bad I am at telepathy, and this stuff seems to punch holes in my crap shields."

Apparently that brought him down to her level, with no training at all. Somehow, it didn't make her feel any better about it. She rolled her eyes and kept her voice low so no one would overhear. "It wasn't so bad at first--I could tell you were there, but it was kind of fuzzy, like the static between wireless stations. Now you've come all into focus, and I can't shut you out. Can't you do maths in your head or something?"

He tried. She felt it. But he was tired--they both were, after running all over the research station and then trying to tranquilize the _mendilith_ (she still said it looked like a sea lion, only with two extra arms and wine-colored fur) before it could drown them in the telepathy enhancer it floated in. Jack kept losing his train of thought in the middle of a calculation, and the Doctor was so busy giving Dr. Oo’la’thisch directions on where it came from and how to safely return it that the whole interaction just couldn't maintain Jack's interest. He was careful not to look at Rose, but his eyes drifted to the lab assistants, a very attractive pair of twins with eight manipulative tentacles, two positioned above each of their four locomotive tentacles. He couldn't help wondering what it would be like to be caught up in those multitudinous limbs, helpless, and where the aa’mrl’izch kept their erogenous zones . . .

"Oi!" She protested, trying to distract him. She got an embarrassed flinch in response. _Keep that up, and you're going to be at_ my _mercy, soon as we're back on the TARDIS._

 _It's not intentional,_ she "heard," in a way that made her brain . . . itch, almost.

"I _know_ that." But she concentrated on a very vivid mental image of him naked and helpless on their bed while she tickled him. After a moment's thought, she added the Doctor watching and a number of self-propelled feathers to help her--because it was her mind, and she could imagine anything she wanted.

He caught his breath, a surge of fear and desire sweeping over him so strongly it made her knees weak even secondhand. She wobbled a little, and he reached out to steady her. The curve of her neck was inviting, and he concentrated on it like his life depended on it. Which it didn't, but his dignity did, because if he couldn't keep himself focused on something reasonably un-arousing, however delightful it might be, he was going to keep coming back to that image she'd so lovingly created. And the very idea of an erection in wet jeans made him cringe.

Rose smothered a strangled laugh even as she found herself wincing in sympathy. "Sorry. I thought that was a threat."

It was, and it wasn't. He thought very hard about maths again.

"I said, I think we're done here," the Doctor said, standing much nearer than Rose remembered and giving the two of them an irritated look. "Unless the two of you want to sightsee a bit?"

Jack whimpered a little, not seeing any sights more compelling at the moment than the Doctor's neck and Rose's wet T-shirt.

Rose managed a little laugh. "No, I think we both want to go home and . . . get out of these wet things."

***

The Doctor was tinkering. Well, really, Rose thought he just didn't want to be in the _en suite_ with her and Jack while they showered. _He_ hadn't been soaked in telepathy stimulator, and even if he had, he'd said, there was nothing wrong with _his_ ability to shield. All of which meant, she suspected, that he felt a bit guilty that they were experiencing the effects they were, and found it easier not to join them until he was sure things were a bit more normal.

That was fine. He could do whatever made him feel better--a hot shower went a long way toward making _her_ feel better, in addition to sluicing the active telepathy juice off her skin. She made small happy noises as she rinsed of the last of the conditioner out of her hair.

Jack chuckled. "Feeling better?" he asked, running a fingertip down her spine in a long line that made her shiver and her nipples harden.

"Much." She could hear the tremor in her voice, that breathy quality that made Jack chuckle in a way that was all sex. At least she wasn't getting mental images from him anymore. She turned around and pressed into him, his half-hard cock against her belly as she nudged him across the floor of the shower and up against the clear dividing panel. "Don't think you're getting off that easy," she said teasingly, dragging her fingernails over his flank, just beneath the ribs.

He snickered and grabbed her hand, lifting it to his lips to kiss each fingertip. "Hey now, don't tell me you're holding what goes on in the privacy--well, usually it's private, anyway--of my own mind against me. I'm happily partnered, but I'm not dead; sometimes, I look at other people."

She tugged her hand out of his grip. "Course I'm not." She used her fingertips this time, and he laughed breathlessly for a few moments before capturing her wrist.

"Then why?" he asked, his voice mild and reasonable.

"Because I want to." She heard his breath catch, and his cock twitched against her flesh. "And I think you want me to. Which I'd have known sooner if you'd ever _said anything_."

He hesitated, something thoughtful and confused going on behind his eyes that she was blissfully not party to. "It's complicated," he said ruefully.

"You don't say." She caught her tongue between her teeth as she grinned up at him, reaching with her left hand this time. It wasn't like she was being sneaky--she held his eyes the whole time, and she knew he knew, even if he couldn't read her mind anymore.

He squirmed as she tickled him, and he kept trying to back away in little twitches that were stymied by the not-really-glass behind him. She saw his shoulder move and then stop abruptly twice before he caught her by the wrist and whimpered. "Stop stop stop stop," he gasped out.

She waited for him to catch his breath. "'Stop' doesn't really mean stop, does it?" she asked, watching his face.

He shook his head. "I think you're going to have to tie me up, though. I'm trying not to stop you, but it's reflex."

She twisted her hands out of his grip and giggled. "And that really hurts your feelings, doesn't it? I know how much you hate being tied up."

He grinned, and things low in her belly tightened.

"Well, come on then." She backed slowly away, grinning in return.

She had stepped around the divider and grabbed one of the fluffy white towels that were waiting for them when Jack said, "Let me."

He moved in behind her and plucked the towel from her grasp, kneeling beside her. His hands on her feet and ankles made her shiver, even through the towel, and he worked his way up her legs with an attention that was erotic and almost worshipful, somehow. The towel caressed its way up over her bum before traveling up her back to her shoulders. Rose closed her eyes as Jack stood and toweled off her hair, massaging her scalp and then squeezing water out of the length.

She opened them again as he moved around in front of her, drying first one arm and hand, and then the other. He carefully used just one corner of the towel to dry her face, her neck, and her chest above her breasts. Then he moved down to dry below them, working his way over belly and hips and between her legs. "I think you missed a spot," she said, amused.

"Not exactly," he whispered, bending his head to lick a drop of water from her left nipple with his tongue.

Rose bit her lip and let herself just feel as Jack lapped lingering beads of water off her skin. They weren't getting to the bed very fast, but it was hard to complain. "Just as well I was going to stand in the quick-dryer to finish my hair," she said breathily.

He sank to his knees to reach the undersides of her breasts, his hands coming to rest lightly on her hips. She looked down at the crown of his head and ran her fingers through his still-wet hair. He closed his eyes and nuzzled the soft skin between her breasts. Her breath caught in her throat, and he paused. She could still see him thinking, even if she couldn't read his mind--it was the faint creases in his forehead that gave him away. She stroked the length of one with the pad of her thumb.

Just like that, the tension dropped away from him. His knees folded so he was sitting on his heels, and he leaned forward to smell her. Even fresh out of the shower, she found herself blushing at the way his nostrils flared while his nose hovered almost against her pubic hair, but she wasn't allowed to be embarrassed right now--she had to be in control. _Face it,_ Rose, _you_ like _being in control._ At least with Jack, at least sometimes. "Now, Jack," she said.

The relaxed look on his face was brilliant, even though she still meant to wipe it away with fits of laughter later. All Jack had to do was concentrate on eating her out, something he knew he was good at. While Rose . . . Rose had to concentrate on staying upright--no easy task as her knees went weak with pleasure. She gasped at the touch of his tongue and whimpered when he curled two fingers inside her, reflexively flailing an arm out for something to keep her upright.

Her hand hit the familiar not-quite-fabric feel of the Doctor's leather jacket, and she realized she'd closed her eyes. That was okay, she wasn't in a rush to open them, not with the Doctor's arms going around her ribs to hold her up and the solid feel of him behind her. Her legs gave way as she came, safe in the Doctor's arms. He kissed her hair while Jack nursed her through her orgasm, leaving her with one last kiss between her legs before leaning his head against her thigh.

"I see you made it to the shower," the Doctor said, quietly amused.

"And out of it, too. And then Jack distracted me." Rose nudged his chest with her knee. "Up, Jack. Dry off and get the restraints out. I want you lying on the bed when I get out there."

"Yes, Rose," Jack said, reflexive as breathing. He stood, and the Doctor caught the back of his neck, drawing him in for a kiss before letting him go on his way.

It was several minutes before she made it into the bedroom herself. The quick-dryer did a good job with her hair, but she never really felt right about it until she'd run a brush through it, too. It was silly--she was going to mess it up and sleep on it and then shower again in the morning, but that didn't change the general unkempt feeling of unbrushed hair.

When she left the _en suite_ , Jack was stretched out on the bed, spread-eagled and eyes closed, while the Doctor relaxed in an armchair to one side, and hadn't undressed except for his boots. Which meant he probably was just planning to watch. "Thought you'd have him tied down by now," she said.

The Doctor smirked. "Didn't sound like you needed the help."

She laughed a little, softly. "Maybe not. D'you suppose we've got feathers around somewhere?"

Jack shivered. It looked like he was biting the inside of his lip.

The Doctor's eyebrows rose. "It's like that, is it? Yeah, there's probably some in the supply cupboard. I can bring them." He got to his feet and moved toward the door.

Rose smiled and caught him for a kiss in passing. "Ta."

The soft restraints she used to tie Jack's wrists and ankles to the bedstead were her favorites. She couldn't accidentally hurt him with them, and she didn't have to fuss with buckles and make sure they were tight enough. All she had to do was wrap them in place and let them seal, listening to the way his breath caught as she fastened each one. The sound made a pleasant little shock run through her each time.

When she'd finished, she sat on the bed beside him. He opened his eyes. "Okay?" she asked.

He smiled, brilliant and genuine and just a little scared. "Yeah."

She rested her hand on his stomach, fingers splayed, his skin warm against the palm of her hand. "I won't stop unless I hear your safe word."

He swallowed. "Yes, Rose."

"So I know you're ticklish here," she said, scratching lightly at the spot on one flank, "and here." She trailed her fingertips over the other, ignoring the way he squirmed and wheezed a little as he tried not to laugh. "Where else?"

She let him breathe long enough to answer. "Not sure. It's been . . . a long time." She gave him a sharp look, and he went on. "But it gets worse--more intense--the longer it goes on." He swallowed. "Like the more you tickle me, the more ticklish I am."

Rose drew a fingertip along the flat stretch of his belly to see if she could make him shiver. He did. "Anything else you ought to be telling me?"

His breath quickened. She let her hand slip between his legs, cradling his balls without really letting him have enough sensation. He groaned. "It also gets worse the closer I get to coming," he whispered.

She stretched out along the length of his body, resting her head on his chest so she could hear the rapid beat of his heart under her ear. "What if I let you come?" She stroked the sweet spot behind his balls to feel him writhe under her touch. "What happens then?"

He whimpered. "No idea," he gasped.

She let him go, dragging her fingernails up his thigh and hip to rest just below a ticklish spot, letting him feel the unspoken threat. "Fantastic." She smiled. "This could be a very long night."

***

Helpless. Oh, fuck, helpless with Rose's fingers all over his sides and creeping down onto his belly, which obligingly responded by growing ever more sensitive, eventually driving further peals of laughter from his lungs. Jack cursed between spasms that weren't really mirth, that weren't really driven by desire--that he wasn't sure he wanted, but he definitely didn't want her to stop.

He struggled against the restraints as she worked her way up and down his body, seeking new spots upon which to wreak havoc, but there was no escape--fortunately, or he would have used it. She found the tender spot where thigh met body, and he all but jumped out of his skin, begging her to stop, please, anything, _fuck_ , just stop, stop . . . ! He couldn't get away, couldn't even close his legs, entirely at her mercy.

Between pleading and laughing, he could hardly get a breath. The world grew strange and dizzying, his own laughter distant in his ears. Voices drifted to him through a fog.

" . . . A couple minutes to recover, anyway." That was Rose. "You're sure you won't help?"

"Looks like you've got it under control," the Doctor said.

"It's not about that." A soft, warm touch, almost too light to feel, played over Jack's left nipple. He shivered, forcing his eyes open, and found Rose plying a small, round-tipped brush over the delicate skin. "Four hands are better than two--or worse, as far as Jack's concerned." She giggled. "You should see how round your eyes are, Jack. Back with us?"

He nodded mutely. Her fingers scrabbled lightly along the crease of his inner thigh. He jerked, swore, and wheezed his laughter.

"Good. Wanted to let you breathe, but I didn't want to lose all this progress." Her voice grew teasing. "It's hard work making you this miserable."

Jack whimpered and laughed. He watched the Doctor's hands creep around Rose's ribs from behind, sliding up to cradle and squeeze her breasts.

She groaned approvingly, then held the small brush up at eye level. "Not that I don't appreciate the attention, but take this and make yourself useful."

That got her a bark of laughter, and the Doctor took the brush out of her hand.

With both her hands available again, Jack's distress doubled under Rose's touch. The brush against his nipples was just one more pleasant sensation, but her touch on the insides of his thighs stole every ounce of control he had.

The Doctor worked the brush methodically over his skin, testing spots they both knew were always sensitive to see if now they were also ticklish. The hollow of his throat was amazing, sending shudders of pleasure down his body to compete with the horrible tickling waves, but that was all. The soft spot behind his ear felt terribly, fantastically vulnerable, but it didn't actually tickle.

A complex array of barely-palpable touches across his stomach made him shriek with laughter. He tried to force the instrument of torture into focus, but his eyes wanted to cross and all he could make out was a vague, green mass in Rose's hand. It slipped down along his pubic bone and between his legs, and then he couldn't see, couldn't think, couldn't do anything but laugh, utterly surrendered to the crawling, shivering cocoon around the hot weight of his cock and balls.

It took until she gave him another breathing break to identify it as a feather duster. He shuddered as she backed down his body, testing it over the soles of his feet. The soft touch was barely palpable.

She raised her eyebrows. "Anything?"

He shook his head, his breath still coming in great, heaving gasps. "No. I'm sorry, Rose."

She gave the Doctor a very wry look. "I'm running out of fresh spots."

"I can think of a few." From the Doctor, that utterly mild response was its own kind of terrifying.

"Where do you want me?"

He shrugged. "Anywhere down to about the hips is fine--I'm going to re-tie his legs."

Rose laughed softly. "You want me to wait until you're done? You might get kicked, otherwise."

Jack, who knew all too well how helpless he was against a Time Lord's strength, swallowed hard and met the Doctor's eyes. Dark with desire and sharply focused, that gaze always made Jack feel like a grand experiment, something the Doctor would learn if it took lifetimes, taking him apart and putting him back together over and over again, as many times as it took to learn each and every distinct physical and emotional response that made up Jack Harkness. And then, with terrifying precision and loving ingenuity, the Doctor would string those responses together, eliciting devastating music from the instrument that was his body, playing him with a supremely merciless skill that would reduce him to laughter, tears, despair--a shuddering, formless heap of unfulfilled desires that bent to his lover's every whim.

He only mouthed the word, he couldn't even give it breath: "Please."

The Doctor looked back at Rose. "No, we'll be fine."

Jack almost wished he could fracture his consciousness in two, the better to give his full attention to Rose, who turned so she could straddle his ribs and tickle his belly at the same time, and also to the Doctor, who easily overrode Jack's reflexive kicking and squirming to release each ankle and bind it to the corresponding thigh. Jack could squeeze his legs together . . . until the Doctor knelt between them, a touch too delicate and fine to be anything but a feather slipping between Jack's legs. Painful, wheezing giggles gave way to yelps of laughter as the Doctor cradled his balls, and Jack tried to buck away from the investigatory touch of the feather over the sweet spot behind them.

Rose said something, but it never quite became words in his mind.

The Doctor guided the feather farther down, fingers probing at spots that, _fuck_ , felt amazing at any time in counterpoint to the unbearable tickling of his perineum. Even his _asshole_ had gone ticklish, which was unbearable and humiliating and unbearable.

They let him breathe. Lungs heaving, Jack continued to squirm after the tickling stopped.

"I'm glad I know you're enjoying this, Jack," Rose said, giving his thigh a concerned squeeze.

Jack whimpered.

"Talk to me, Jack," the Doctor said. "Need to know that you're okay."

Jack took two deep breaths. "What . . . what about?"

That damnable feather brushed the underside of his cock and he bit down on a squeal. "Can you come while we're doing this to you?"

The feather stopped. Jack cast an appalled look down his body, but the Doctor would never see it through Rose's gorgeous hips. "What?"

"You heard me."

"Yeah, but I think my brain exploded." It was always amazingly hot to be helpless with his partners, but his body was at sixes and sevens, unable to concentrate on any one stimulus while his nerves didn't know whether he was about to fly apart or collapse in on himself like the last stage of a supernova. "I don't know."

Rose's soft, familiar hand grasped the base of his cock. He groaned, and she stroked him up and down just once as his hips pressed up against her hand. "I think we should find out," she said.

Jack heard a small, horrified noise from his own throat.

"Fantastic," the Doctor agreed. And then . . . then Jack choked on a burst of laughter, almost throwing Rose off as a feather swirled around and into the slit of his cock.

Rose made a disgruntled sound and scooted down his body, sitting firmly across his hips. "Dangerous, that."

"You want it?" The Doctor asked, mildly amused.

"Yeah."

Jack closed his eyes as the torture began anew, uncertain they wouldn't pop out of their sockets as the feather went where _nothing_ was ever meant to go, and he couldn't stop laughing through his terror.

Cool, slick fingers penetrated him, ignoring the burn caused by his own tense, traitorous body and driving straight for his prostate. Pleasure and distress twisted together in his throat and for a moment he couldn't breathe, couldn't see, dissolved into Jack-shaped nothingness.

"All right, all right, maybe too much," he heard the Doctor saying, as if at a distance.

Rose went back to her feather duster, then, and it was torture of a different kind to be unable to flinch from her without also flinching from the driving pleasure that was almost too much. Jack laughed, he wept, he tried to thrust up into the cool, wet mouth that sucked the head of his cock, but Rose's weight held him in place.

It wasn't enough, none of it, not to let him have that shining moment of pleasure, never more desirable than when it was _just_ out of reach.

He breathed.

"He really can't." Rose's voice was fascinated. Jack didn't hear the Doctor respond, and Rose said, "Let him."

"Are you sure?" the Doctor asked.

"There's something I want to try."

They didn't even have to touch his cock. The Doctor's too-knowing fingers stroked over his prostate, and Jack was coming, and coming apart.

Every nerve sang, and his skin tingled as if billions of microscopic bubbles swam past it.

The brush of the feather duster across his thighs and over his spent cock went past surprising, all the way to shock as the sensations overpowered him, a dozen times as intense as they'd been before. Laughter escaped from his raw throat. He fought the Doctor's grip, managed to get a breath, and gasped, "Stardust!"

Everything stopped.

Somewhere deep in the underbelly of his own brain, Jack expected concern from the Doctor, expected the soothing sound of the Doctor's voice in his ear, telling Jack that it was enough, that he'd been good. But the Doctor stayed where he was, calmly stroking Jack's knee while Rose stretched out alongside him, holding him, whispering that he needed to talk to her, tell her if he was all right.

It felt so good to let her hold him, but he could feel the tension in her frame, and that was no good, no good at all when he felt boneless and amazing in the midst of the afterglow and just wanted his partners to cuddle with him, not to worry. He babbled something at her and was never sure what, later on, but it seemed to reassure her. The Doctor untied first his legs and then his arms while Rose laid her head on his shoulder and stroked his skin in small, soothing circles.

When the Doctor lay down on his other side, Jack drew him in for a leisurely kiss, telling him with the touch of his hand and his lips that he was so much better than just okay.

The Doctor ran the pad of his thumb down the vulnerable length of Jack's throat. "We finally found 'too much'?" he asked, faintly amused.

Rose stiffened in Jack's arms, and Jack turned his head to kiss her concern away. "I think we found 'perfect'."


End file.
